Phoenix Rising
by Kara-Meir
Summary: Precursor to the Biotic, Kassie wakes up in the distant future. Hunted by her Cerberus captors for her powers, she tries to make sense of this new world. Help arrives in the form of the crew on The Normandy, a family Kassie finally belongs to. Will she find a place to fit in in this strange new world? Will the phoenix rise again? Runs from six months before ME2 to right before ME3.
1. Awakening

**I'm used to writing mainly poems and never uploading my stories or having people read them but since graduation is a month or so away I figured it's time to put the big girl pants on and start posting my babies. I like poems so at the beginning of each chapter and sometimes the end I'll put in a poem I wrote or lyrics I found that either fit the story, my mood, or just cause. Read and enjoy if you dare...**

**P.S. I hate misspelling words so if you find some don't be afraid to lemme know. **

Angel, Angel what have I done

Where are all the ashes coming from?

Drifting all alone to confront my fears

Nothing by my side you can't be here

For the longest time she couldn't breathe. The lack of oxygen or whatever it was had set her chest on fire. It was dark, she didn't like the dark. It wasn't the friendly sort of dark like turning the lights off to watch a scary movie, it was the kind of dark like taking a stroll into the mouth of Hell with a dead battery and rotten meat smell.

How she got to be in this place is unfathomable and puzzling. It felt like so long since a coherent thought had formed. Memory fails to come up with a reason, no matter how hard she thinks. They didn't want her around, they wanted her gone. That can't be it, she's done nothing wrong.

_Too powerful… not stable… can't contain. _

Another eternity passes by before she recalls the name given at birth to the little girl who arrived two weeks overdue because she was too stubborn to come out. Kassiopeia, Kassie for short. That unlocks a multitude of images, each one flashing by before one settles down enough to play out into a memory.

A little girl sits on a chair in front of a dressing table, playing with the clutter scattered across it. The mirror on top of it is surrounded by light bulbs, like the kind that you'd find on a carousel or in a funhouse. A door opens behind the mirror and a woman comes through wearing a sequined silk dress with a slit up the side like a Broadway starlet. Her shining long brown hair and striking blue eyes glimmer with amusement at the little girl, playing dress-up and pretending to be like mommy. She shakes her head and smiles, laughing and swooping down to capture her in a spinning hug.

The little girl begs mommy to show her how to put on makeup like a big girl does. The woman shakes her head in amusement and shows her single audience member how to apply the makeup and put her hair up in a bun like the ballerinas do. In the end they both giggle at their reflections and clean up the mess before heading out to leave. Walking out the door holding hands the little girl looks up and says I love you momma. Her mother looks down and whispers back always and forever sunshine.

The next image to slow down shows the same little girl, but she's not so little anymore. Possibly around twelve years old or so, tears wind their way down her face one after the other. On the stand before her is a coffin, and lain out in that coffin is her mother, still as beautiful as the day she died. Mourners file past to pay their respects, each sparing the girl a pitying glance before finding a seat for the service. She stands like a statue next to the coffin until her father gently leads her to a seat where she stares out into space as a priest drones on and on for an hour or two. Her father leads her to the car after they bury the coffin in the ground, heading out into the terrible unknown.

_If we can't control her dispose of the body immediately. We don't need the publicity if she managed to escape._

A tapping sound shakes Kassie out of her musings, chasing away the darkness and bringing light into the shadows. Her head is heavy and groggy, like she imagines it would be for Sleeping Beauty after a century asleep. Her limbs are heavy and she wants to puke. It takes five minutes or so before she can wiggle a finger without plopping it down in exhaustion. Her eyelids are like cement, weighed down so they don't want to open.

Something is pressing down on her face, going down the sides to wrap around her head. She lifts an arm to probe around, finally realizing the reason she couldn't open her eyes is that a length of gauze is wrapped around her eyes and the back of her neck. It unwraps after getting caught on the edge of something hard and smooth, from recent surgery perhaps? She didn't remember hitting her head on anything to warrant a hospital trip. She gets off and stands from whatever she's been laying on, some type of mix between hospital bed and upgraded cot.

"Not that I haven't earned a trip there before…" she adds, remembering a fall or two out of trees. "I should've stayed on the ground."

Searching the rest of her body for any abnormalities she finds she's dressed in some type of uniform, a long-sleeved top like the type she saw in a movie once, and the matching uniform pants to go with. Plain, with little embellishment. She pinches the fabric to see what it's made of, some type of smooth soft-flowing material. Black, grey, and white colors with a little orange and black logo on the chest, but lacking shoes and socks of any kind. The floor is cold and sends goose bumps everywhere. Long hair reaching down her back comes undone from a braid, colored in a multitude of blues, dark, light, purplish, tropical sea, sky, and many more.

Pain shoots through the back of her head right where the gauze is wrapped around her neck. It's a crippling fire shooting through the nerves clustered there, and it sends her down to her knees squeezing the gauze hoping the pain would go away. She screams but there's no sound, throat turning raw from the strain.

_We need to take it out. Her body is rejecting the implant. DO IT NOW!_

Bile forms in her throat and then she pukes all over the floor, dry heaving when nothing comes up until slowly the pain ebbs away until it is merely a pounding headache behind her eyes.

"What the hell is wrong with me?" She rasps out, curled up into a little ball. "Why is this happening?"

"Just close your eyes

The sun is going down

You'll be alright

No one can hurt you now

Come morning light

You and I'll be safe and sound"

**Whoo this has been a long time coming. Three years of writing and I finally have the courage/time to post this. I survive on reviews my lovelies, please don't let me starve. (And Kassiopeia is spelled with a K because I like it better than the original spelling.)**


	2. Beyond Beginnings

Ohana means family

Family means no one gets left behind

Or forgotten

_Where did Subject Phoenix go? It's not possible for her to escape. Find her now!_

Kassie wakes up cold and hungry on the floor, face squished against the tiles that'd imprinted their pattern onto her cheek. She wipes the drool from the corner of her mouth with the uniform sleeve, still trying to figure out what it's made of.

"I've got to find a phone somewhere, figure out where the hell I am." She spits out after getting rid of the cottonmouth.

Fear is a powerful thing. It makes us weak when we need to be strong, broken when we need to be together. Thrown into an unfamiliar situation fear is the first and foremost natural response to present itself.

It's mind numbing in a way, the fear is. Slowly shutting the body down until there's nothing left but the all-consuming power it possesses. Kassie can feel the beginnings of the panic, the feeling of waking up alone and not knowing anything. It's like being blind in a maze with your only way out the echoes of rain falling from the sky.

Taking stock of her surroundings Kassie looks for something to identify where she could possibly be. It's not like any hospital room she's been in before though. It's a lot more updated, high tech, and very sterile looking. Silver and white chrome walls and a window looking into an identical copy room, half of which she can see from this point, with a see through computer and not much else.

The door to in-between the two rooms has no defined handle, no rough edges to grab onto and pull, only a smooth seamless nothing. She can't figure out why somebody would install a door that has no way to open. A useless piece of engineering if she ever saw one. Maybe it's some art junkie's way of disrupting the monotone walls.

No papers left strewn around, odd for a hospital even if this is a patient's room. The low hum of machines breaks up the silence, all coming from the other room of course. The slow steady beeps of a heart monitor, artificial whoosh of an air pump in motion, and the unintelligible gibberish of someone speaking in a hushed whisper.

Suddenly the heart monitor starts beeping faster and the voices churn faster and faster in a frenzied panic. Clattering is heard and the pounding of feet circling from place to place. Kassie sees the flash of something dark, possibly hair, before everything goes calm again.

After a while the voices leave the room next door. The closer Kassie gets to the window, the more she gets this weird feeling, almost like a shadow of something. It's not solid, more like a mist than anything else, but something familiar, something she's felt before.

"What are you trying to tell me brain? That I'm in the middle of some seriously screwed up shit? Kinda figured that out already thanks for noticing."

The door has some sort of mechanism on it right near midriff height. It's a big red hologram of some sort, and it turns green when she gets closer. She reaches her hand towards it to see what happens and hits an obstacle. A literal obstacle as it turns out the green light is solid.

"What the hell? Am I hallucinating?" Kassie breathes out as her hand inches forward.

She pushes harder on the green object and the door whooshes open. It's like a door on Star Wars or something, it's beyond advanced.

"On second thought, I'm in some rich billionaire's wonderland."

The room is a mirror image of hers, except ten times larger. A body lies on an operating table in the center of the room, still as the night and the source of all the beeps from the heart monitor and attention of unknown people. Kassie looks around the room for any sign of life, but no one is around. To ward off any noise she crouches low to the ground and slinks to the operating table to find out who's on it.

Rising up on the side of the table she sees a woman with carrot colored hair in a tight bun, eyes closed as if sleeping, chest rising and falling with long, slow, drawn out breaths. A grey form fitting suit similar to what Kassie wears but closer to a wetsuit in the way it clings to her form covers her body.

"Why do they keep you here next to me? What crime did you commit to be stuck here in this place?" Kassie whispers into the empty room.

She reaches towards the woman and lightly touches her hand and then… BAM! Flashes of images stream through Kassie's mind at a frenzied rate.

A little girl playing on the floor at her mother's feet with a toy spaceship, people in uniforms coming and going out an airlock. Swearing in at a ceremony the Oath of Service for the Alliance. Standing at a podium receiving the Star of Terra for outstanding bravery on the field of battle at Elysium. Finding her way to this new ship she's to be XO on, the SSV Normandy and getting lost until a handsome Marine with an ass to die for shows her the way to the docks. Discovering a beacon on Eden Prime. Finding Saren. Traitor Saren. Virmire! Ash dead. Sovereign attacking! Citadel saved. Hunting. Waiting. Geth. Attacking! Ship destroyed. Save Joker… Can't breathe… Fading… Kaidan…

As she sees the past of the woman before her words start spouting from her lips in a double-timbre echo.

_"__Your world will burn in the fires of war_

_Go beyond the reach of the living_

_A field of battle lies at hand _

_Justice runs on crimson rivers_

_Barely human prove them wrong_

_Three headed dog with an iron grip_

_Don't be controlled give them the slip."_

As the last words echo and fade from the room Kassie can feel blood gushing from her nose and streaming down her chin. Eyes roll into the back of her head and she falls to the floor in a heap against the cold tiles again.

A light turns on behind one of the other windows. The person behind it looks at a screen of a security camera and smiles.

"Project Phoenix has successfully activated."

**Yaaay the itch in my brain has finally been scratched! Ah to see the work one creates go from thought to paper to reality. My life is complete once more. **


End file.
